Tag Archives: volume control

The way you can automate tasks in Android is something you can't do even half as well on other smartphone platforms (we're looking at you iOS) and the apps that are developed to cater to Android's customization abilities are simply amazing. You may have heard that a Do Not Disturb feature is coming to Android L and while we don't have an app that replicates it for lower versions of Android, we have some that can tie us down well enough until Android L arrives. Mr. Silent, Auto silent mode is an Android app that lets you automate when your device is set on either silent or vibrate mode. You can set time slots, locations, events, and even select contacts, that the app will automatically mute your device for.
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Music, sound, and volume profiles; we've covered tweaks for all of them ranging from those that let you manage the volume for all media channels, Activator gestures for the Music app, and even things like putting selective apps in silent mode. A lot of tweaks exist in popular repositories that let you manage sound either of your device or media playing on your device. Volume+ is the newest addition to this category of tweaks. It enriches the volume HUD and lets you see which song is playing, access the Music app, switch to the Messages app to send a new message, and access the camera.
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Your iDevice has several different sound output channels; one for notifications, one for media, one for the in-call sound, and more. To adjust the volume for any one of these channels, they must be active. If you want to change the volume of a call, you must be in a call to do so. Volume Mixer is a Cydia tweak available in the BigBoss repo for $0.99 that lets you change the volume of each channel without it being active. The tweak puts the volume controls in the Notification Centre (leaving Control Centre untouched). The tweak lets you customize which sound channels appear in the Notification Centre and also lets you change the theme of the controls with rich customization options available for the default iOS theme.
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Having your phone ring in the middle of a meeting is never a pleasant experience, especially if the meeting is a high-level one with critical business importance. Unfortunately, as much as we depend on our smartphones these days to manage through one clock cycle, this has become a rather unavoidable experience. Granted, you can always put your phone in silent mode, but that means silencing everything, and many a times when we forget to put the device back on ringer after the meeting is over, we end up missing important notifications and even phone calls from time to time. Personally, that’s one dilemma that I’ve gone through time and time again, without much luck at finding a solution. Well, if you face a similar concern and have a jailbroken iPhone, AppSilence is one free jailbreak tweak that can save the day for you.
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Do you turn your smartphone to silent mode each time you get to work? Don't want to disturb your sleeping roommate with your phone’s loud ringtone in the middle of the night? If I have one real gripe with Android, it’s the operating system’s poor implementation of volume management. It doesn’t give you much control over the different types of sounds your device emits, let alone create presets like those old feature phones from Nokia or Samsung. If you'd like to have a little more customization at your disposal, then give Persist Volume Control a shot. The app provides greater control over your Android device's acoustics, giving you the option to set separate volume levels for the ringer, notifications, alarms, media, system, in-call sound etc., and creating volume presets for different situations.
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Having a mere silent mode in your cellphone might be enough for some occasions, but all of us have certain patterns in our routines, and putting these patterns to good use can always prove to be useful. This is evident from the popularity of the Do Not Disturb feature available in iOS. It is a testament to its usefulness that Apple brought Do Not Disturb to OS X soon after it was unveiled for iOS 6. Now, Windows Phone users can enjoy their quiet time in peace as well, thanks to a third-party app named Quiet Hours. This WP8 app is not as feature-rich as Do Not Disturb for iOS, but you will still find enough options in it to cater to most situations. With Quiet Hours, users can toggle silent mode with a single tap on a live tile, schedule hours when the phone should go silent, and even set separate sound profiles for each day of the week.

Ultimate Sound Control for Android makes up for what the Android OS otherwise lacks in: sound customization and detailed settings. At times, you have to wait for the appropriate sound to play so that you can adjust its volume with the volume rocker, and even then, you can only tweak it for a group of similar sounds. Maybe I don’t want my phone to sound off when the battery is low, but why should enabling silent mode be the answer? Ultimate Sound Control gives you the option to turn off most sounds used throughout your device, which is otherwise quite a tedious task, only manageable through the editing of system files, where there is always the risk of breaking sounds if you made even the slightest of mistakes. It goes without saying, a novice user wouldn’t even dare venture into these parts of the OS. This app seems to have been built keeping all that in mind, and will run on any rooted Android phone running Android 2.3 and above. Maybe Google could take cue from this and work on making such features native to the Android OS.
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Nirsoft is well-regarded for creating top-notch and highly simple Windows applications that are small, portable, minimal and yet comprehensive when it comes to the task they are designed to perform. You won't find in them any redundant settings and options that might needlessly complicate things. Take SoundVolumeView for example, the developer’s brand new effort that allows you to control the volume for all sound devices that your PC has. Crammed in a small 75KB package and having support for both x64 and x86 architectures, the tool makes it possible to get a general overview of current volume for all active sound components and lets you individually control the volume of each component and application, along with the ability of selectively muting and unmuting them. Details to follow after the jump.
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If you like customizing your iPhone and have access to Cydia, there are plenty of ways the status bar of your device can be completely revamped, like our recently covered HomeDisplay - a tweak that adds some extra information to the iOS status bar. Another part of iOS that offers a quick way of viewing some basic info is the volume HUD. There are tweaks like VolumeCustomize that can change the way the HUD looks, but none changes it as much as the newly released StatusHUD by Alan Yip. In fact, you can argue that the tweak gets rid of the HUD altogether. Having said that, no information is lost, as StatusHUD adds the volume indicator to the status bar. Even on the lock screen, the new indicator shows up when the volume keys are pressed.
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Quite a long time ago, we covered a Cydia tweak by the name of Volume Booster, which did a pretty good job of enhancing the maximum volume level of iOS devices. iOS has come a long way since then, but some things haven’t improved a great deal. While the bottom speakers in iPhone can play sounds at a pretty high volume, many people still complain that the in-call volume could have been a lot better. Since iPhone 5 comes with hardware that is different from any of its predecessors, a lot of users assumed that the call volume issue won’t rear its ugly head in it. Sadly, this isn't the case, and in even slightly noisy environments, users are hard-pressed to understand what the person on the other end of the line is saying, no matter how much they crank up the volume. Volume Amplifier is a new tweak that doesn't tinker with the bottom speakers on an iPhone, but only deals with increasing the in-call volume, making it possible to increase the volume by up to 200%.
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Multimedia keyboards offer a lot of advantages over normal ones. Along with providing extra keys for navigating the web browser and controlling playback in music players like iTunes, Windows Media Player and more, many keyboards also let you control volume without having to do so from the options built into Windows or the hardware volume knob on your speakers. That’s why I always prefer and recommend a multimedia keyboard whenever a friend asks for suggestions or I myself need to purchase one. But if you don’t own a multimedia keyboard, or simply prefer a standard one, but would like to have volume controls on it, fret not! You can still do exactly that, thanks to 3RVX. I have been playing with this minuscule tool for the last couple of days and have found it very handy for what it does. This tiny app lets you change speaker volume output via hotkeys, and the great thing is that you can use a combination of keyboard and mouse shortcuts for the purpose.
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We’ve covered apps that let you manage networks, and then we've also reviewed some that allow you to manage your daily tasks. But how about an app that could let you manage, or more precisely, automate your speaker’s volume? Speaker Admin is a Windows app that does exactly that, allowing its users to automate their volume level according to the time of the day. You can basically specify time slots during which you want the volume to stay at a certain level. You can also entirely shush it down at night by selecting the mute option. If you’re among those of us who usually leave their speakers at full volume but don’t want to hear complains from their family, roommates or neighbors regarding their distasteful music choice, Speark Admin can come very handy. Further details after the jump.
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So you’re driving, listening to your favorite tracks and have just reached your destination. You pick up the phone and realize you have a bunch of unattended calls, consequently realizing the phone was on silent and the vibrator buzz was just not loud enough in all that music. This has happened to me a lot, and there are plenty of other moments it skips one's mind to turn of the silent mode, or even turn it on – which can be embarrassing at times. Enter Intelligent Ringer - the app that adjusts your phone’s ring volume based on the ambient noise level, and uses the proximity sensor to detect a pocketed phone to enable the maximum ring volume. The app is a breeze to set up as well, and you wont get lost in a heap of complicated settings. Read on after the jump to see how well the app fares and what more it has to offer. Read More

The translucent box that shows up on your iPhone’s screen every time you change its volume might not be the most important feature of iOS, but the Cydia store already has a few tweaks that focus on this HUD to enhance it. Some tweaks let you add more information to the volume display but if you don’t want to alter it too drastically, there are options like Hud that add album art to the box whenever you are listening to music. Music HUD is a new Cydia release that can be deemed a combination of the two aforementioned tweaks. It doesn’t focus on a single particular feature, though everything it offers is related to music. Thanks to Music HUD, it is possible to control song playback by performing gestures on the HUD, add album art to it and tweak the music info that is displayed. Read More

Usually a Cydia tweak is considered good if it brings something new to your iPhone without taking away any of the existing options. You can get almost any useful feature on iOS if you have a jailbroken device and are willing to alter its looks for the worse. Screen brightness is something that iPhone users can control only from the stock Settings app, unless they have a jailbroken device. Even with access to the Cydia store, you get tweaks that add unsightly buttons to the SpringBoard, but then there is also the rather neat SBSettings control for brightness. BrightVol is a tweak allows you to adjust your phone's brightness level in a completely new way. Read on to find out how. Read More

Those developers over at Cydia really don’t leave any area of iOS alone. Even something as small as the volume HUD can be enhanced quite a bit thanks to a number of tweaks available in the jailbreak store. HUD Pro is unique compared to other tweaks of its kind, though, since it adds some new functionalities to the HUD rather than merely changing its appearance. The volume indicator in iPhone and iPod touch devices becomes visible for such a short period of time that it goes largely unnoticed, but after you install HUD Pro, this is sure to change for you. The tweak lets its users perform gestures over the HUD to accomplish tasks like locking the screen, controlling music or viewing song lyrics. Even if you aren’t a big fan of gesture control, the volume HUD becomes much more useful than before by displaying complete time, date and music info above the volume icon.
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Smart Volume Control is a powerful multilingual sound profile management app for Android that vows to be the ultimate solution for your device’s volume adjustment, automation and tweaking needs. Besides supporting hyper-customizable sound profiles, the app brings to the table several features that are hard to find in most similar solutions. For instance, it offers multiple profile presets under a accelerometer-controlled Speed Volume Mode that can be availed to activate personalized sound settings for when you’re out on the road, cycling, or crossing a subway.
The app lets you schedule activation of profiles according to desired time, or as per your Google and/or Microsoft Exchange calendar events. Want your device to automatically silence, or redirect incoming calls to Bluetooth when at your workplace? Smart Volume Control’s location-based profile automation has your back. Then there is a fully customizable profile for when your headphones are plugged in to your device. The app’s many thoroughly customizable widgets allow you to play around with the desired sound profiles and settings directly from the home screen itself. Read More

When I go to sleep at night, I like to play my favorite playlist in Windows Media Player. Even though, it has a built-in auto volume leveling enhancement, some of the tracks have sudden bursts of high sound, which can prove to be quiet disturbing when I am trying to sleep. Like me, a lot of other people do the same. They like to listen to music, a radio stream or a podcast when they lie down to sleep and a sudden burst of loud volume can disturb them (especially if the next track has higher volume than the current playing track). If you are one of those people who love to listen to your favorite playlist when going to sleep and want to avoid such situations, VolumeOut is your friend. It's a lightweight and portable app for Windows that lets you set a countdown timer. Once set, it will gradually reduces the volume from the current state to zero.
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Switching between audio input and output devices on Mac isn’t that hard. If you plug in a pair of headphones, it automatically detects and sets it as the default output device. If you have multiple devices connected to your Mac, you can hold down the Option key, click the volume icon in the Menu Bar and switch to another source. Strictly speaking, this is probably as much as the average user needs. For users with slightly more complex needs, including frequently switching to different audio input or output devices, you might even find holding down the Option key a bit inconvenient. AudioSwitcher is a small utility for OS X that allows you to quickly switch between audio input and output devices connected to your Mac. Not only that, it also allows you to control the volume for input and output separately without having to visit System Preferences. Read More

Sometimes, while watching a movie (especially horror movies), it happens that the scene changes and the sound level of the new scene is a lot louder than the previous one. That is OK if it happens at day time, but it can be quite disturbing for others if the same thing happens at night, when everyone else is sleeping. Sure, you can use headphones at night, but some people, including myself, like to keep speakers as the default sound output device because of the higher detail. If you turn the volume down, you will not be able to properly hear the parts with low sound, and if you turn the volume up, there is always the risk of a loud bang disturbing everyone. Today, we have a small application called Sound Lock, which solves all those issues and allows you to set a maximum level for the sound coming out from your speakers. This way, you can select any level of volume required and still not worry about it spiking up during a movie. Keep reading to find out more about Sound Lock.
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AddictiveTips is a tech blog focused on helping users find simple solutions to their everyday problems. We review the best desktop, mobile and web apps and services out there, in addition to useful tips and guides for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS and Windows Phone. Read more...